


Sharing Music: On the Extradimensional Earworm

by brawltogethernow



Series: 50 things to do after your first interdimensional jaunt [3]
Category: Marvel, Spider-Gwen (Comics), Spider-Man (Comicverse), Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: (of og gwen because i am a banjo with one string and no frets), Canonical Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Miles' Extradimensional Mixtape, Music, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Post-Canon, Spider-Fam Spider-Fam does whatever found family...am, The Mary Janes (Spider-Gwen), you've heard of eight million peters now get ready for: eight million mjs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24268492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawltogethernow/pseuds/brawltogethernow
Summary: Is it pirating to share around MP3s of songs in worlds where they were never recorded?(Is it mourning if the voice you're hearing belongs to someone who never died?)
Relationships: Gwen Stacy & Mary Jane Watson, Miles Morales & Peni Parker & Peter B. Parker & Peter Benjamin Parker & Peter Porker & Gwen Stacy
Series: 50 things to do after your first interdimensional jaunt [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1603408
Comments: 6
Kudos: 67
Collections: Web of Worlds





	Sharing Music: On the Extradimensional Earworm

**Author's Note:**

> Occurred to me I should crosspost this. From way back in early 2019 when the high from this film was at its peak, remodeled to be less notfic. It's still a little notfic though.

0.  
A meandering about earworms.

(Actually, this is about Mary Jane (and also Mary Jane).)

1.  
It takes spending about thirty minutes around Miles to get a halfassed version of “Sunflower” stuck in your head, so the requests he share around MP3s that start to pour in are inevitable.

(A solar-powered player is rigged up through collaborative effort for Noir, which was kindly meant but poorly planned, because his dimension is very dark. It’s a work in process. Peni has to modify her tech to be able to play formats that old. Ham can make "What's Up, Danger?" play on any assorment of objects stacked into a recognizable record player shape, but only if the record part spins.)

Eventually everybody gets a playlist of handpicked musn’t-miss favorites. This is a godsend, because there aren’t many things as frustrating as being unable to listen to the song stuck in your head because _it doesn’t exist in your dimension._

2.  
Gwen is in an _actual band_ , so their discography gets cajoled out of her to be passed around next. They’re surprisingly good as long as you like angry girly rock with a strong drumline. (Only Peter B. is enough of a square to be on the fence about angry girly rock with a strong drumline. Even Noir warms up to it fast, and his dimension is still getting used to jazz.)

3.  
Gwen plays drums in the band The Mary Janes. Lead singer: Mary Jane. The most noteworthy reaction to this belongs to Mary Jane.

Not Gwen’s, Mary Jane of the Mary Janes, an omnidirectionally furious high school student whose social group is already down one friend.

Or Miles’s, the twenty-something widow who makes public appearances and never did get her table new bread.

The other one. The 36-year-old from Peter B.’s dimension. The ex-model and sometimes-actress. The one who encounters these songs that don’t belong as she and Peter experimentally drift back into each other’s orbits.

4.  
(When she asked what drove him to her door, Peter fessed up about the dimension travel immediately. It honestly barely ranks among stories he’s told her. He never even ends up in a sewer, he _barely_ ends up naked, there were no aliens involved, and there wasn't even any secondhand eye candy unless you count alternate baby Peter and his MJ.

She pointedly comments that she’s always been into blonds just to see Peter's face ratchet through six expressions in under two seconds.)

5.  
But anyway, the Mary Janes. Headed by Mary Jane. As heard by Mary Jane.

Mary Jane acquires a thumb drive of slightly staticky audio tracks from Peter. They immediately supplant her previous housecleaning music.

Maybe this is a blasé use of an extradimensionally-sourced playlist, but whatever. Their discography is exactly the kind of music Mary Jane would come up with if she had a band, obviously (is it obviously?), but without the closeness of having made it herself that keeps people from really enjoying their own work. It’s great.

It’s also surreal as hell.

MJ is more used to listening to recordings of her own voice than most people, but it’s still surprisingly dissonant to listen to this kid who is and isn’t her scream and show off. Weird when she recognizes herself. Weirder when she doesn’t. If she sings along, sometimes her other self's voice folds her own into its noise.

6.  
Sometimes, alongside the teenage Mary Jane’s showboating and and the raw emoting she masks with it, other voices join in to harmonize for a few lines when a song needs it.

One of them belongs to a ghost.

It’s Gwen Stacy’s voice: Almost but not quite how she was when MJ knew her.

(This MJ has also been a teenager whose social group was already down one friend.)

It’s been exactly as many years since then as their Gwen was alive in the first place, this year. It's been more years than the girl with her voice has lived. Maybe after all those years, the first time she hears her shouldn’t hit like a sucker punch to the solar plexus.

7.  
It does, though.


End file.
